


heart of stone, home

by meritmut



Series: i loved you well, when we were young [14]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Avengers, remember that dagger Sif had....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 18:05:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now he's home in Hell, serves him well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	heart of stone, home

i.

“At last she comes.”

Sif halts.

_How long it’s been, since she’s heard that viper’s voice._

“…and all Asgard trembles.”

How long it’s been since the malice in his tongue laid poisons thick in the air and turned it foul with his cruelty – since she would grit her teeth and tighten her fists and hold herself back from sweeping the venoms aside with her sword, _and just when she thought she could stand it no more, the storm would break and Loki would look into her eyes and the ice in his own would melt away into a lightly mocking smile._

He loved to test her, to poke and prod at her nerves until she snapped and found herself a breath away from him, fingers curling at his collar in threat and warning. Lips, moving in silent promise of a return to his vicious wiles. Of vengeance.

She is good at vengeance, better at violence, better still at victory.

“Trembles at the righteous fury in her stride.”

_How long has it been? Too long._

Once (so very long ago, if she measures in their collective heartbeats rather than days; it’s no real span of ages for an immortal but for a realm as shaken as the one to which she’s sworn it might as well be lifetimes that have passed them by since everything they thought true and good was taken and turned upon its head) she might have missed it. She might have mourned the time and distance and heart-sunk pain that divides them now.

Instead, hearing Loki’s bitterly sarcastic welcome (and it is a welcome, he’s been here in this gaol for too long, spent too much time alone to spurn any offer of company now and Sif at least he remembers with a touch of affection, through the exasperation that _of course_ she’d choose _the other_ side, she’d be so utterly and perfectly and boringly predictable in her allegiances and he’d never imagine otherwise because then she wouldn’t be Sif) and the mockery dripping from his words, a rush of sickening rage swells in Sif’s gut and rises in a wave of bile to near choke her.

But still she walks, carries herself as she always has done – with her head held high and her manner as indomitable as her character – to stand before the great open wall of his cell. There’s a blade in her right hand, flipped between her fingers like another kind of person might flip a coin, effortless and seemingly careless but of course there’s care. It’s a weapon, and Sif is a warrior, and she would never be less than meticulous with anything capable of dealing death.

Including him. Which is why she keeps distance between them, and lets her gaze rove all over him before finally it settles on his face.

When she finally looks him in the eye, he sees her shoulders settle and her mouth tighten, and he knows she’s lost to him.

ii.

In some ways, the gaol in which Loki has been thrown to rot is as much a taunt to him as it is a chastisement.

Open, exposed, brightly-lit, it’s a calculated form of incarceration and he’s known it from the moment they tossed him in here to waste away until the Allfather’s judgement decrees otherwise. There are no shadows, no corner left in darkness. Nowhere in which he can be alone with his thoughts, because nothing in this cell goes unseen – and he can’t see them but he knows they’re there. Knows they are watching him. They’d be fools to do anything else.

They’ve always thought him slippery, a sneak-thief of godly proportions. They give him no chance now to be so again, when he’s proven himself to be everything they believed and more. They take no risks with their prodigal nightmare prince.

iii.

“I’ve been waiting for you. Have you come to gloat, dear Sif?”

Of course she hasn’t. When has she ever?

Still, it amuses him to tease her a little in return.

“I’ve come because I owe it to you,” she grates out, her jaw moving as if to utter the words were to admit some kind of weakness. The simplicity of it surprises Loki. Pride and maybe the need to assert her victory over him (and herself), he might’ve expected that from Sif. It can hardly bring her any joy seeing him like this, when she’d always professed such faith in him. But a sense of debt? That’s new.

It’s new and it’s unsettling, and it sets Loki on edge.

"You owe me nothing," he tells her coldly, but she carries on as if he hadn’t spoken.

“…because once we were friends.” _More than that, but there’s no one left to care about that. Semantics never bothered her._ "And now that I have come, I need never do so again."

 _Ah. So it’s duty too. Clearing her conscience._ Guilt doesn’t sit well on a shieldmaiden’s shoulders, and it’s only natural that Sif would work quickly to remove it from her own. The knife flips a little higher, the only outward demonstration of her agitation.

"So hail, Loki.”

She steps forward, free hand fluttering at her side as if she were about to salute him before remembering that he’s no longer worthy of it.

"Hail and farewell."

With her shift in stance the dagger flashes in the light pouring out from his cell and at last he sees it clear enough to recognise the beautiful craftsmanship as one of his own blades.

His knife.

(His a long time ago, hers now, a token stolen from his bedside decades ago and never returned. He never mourned its loss because it meant her gain, her continued presence in his life, and though she is not something to be owned it still seemed like an unfair exchange.)

This, more than cell or muzzle or chains, is the taunt that sinks its claws the furthest into him in his embittered state. The fact that she palms and twirls this open sign of their former bond so calmly in her hand, and her eyes show nothing of remembrance for it.

He knows his face shows the recognition - and he doesn’t care. Let her see it, let her know that she above them all has, as ever, the most power over him, and if it gives her some kind of pleasure, let it too.

The knife was one of his first gifts to her.

"Farewell, Lady," murmurs Loki. He can’t even muster the requisite sarcasm as she turns and walks away.

_Let that knowledge be the last._


End file.
